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Author Topic: Terrain conundrum.....  (Read 1508 times)

Offline Silent Invader

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Terrain conundrum.....
« on: June 29, 2017, 08:24:18 AM »

« Last Edit: March 06, 2018, 02:02:14 PM by Silent Invader »
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Offline OSHIROmodels

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Re: Terrain conundrum.....
« Reply #1 on: June 29, 2017, 08:36:24 AM »
Buy a bigger house  :D

On a more serious note though, I would stick with the 300mm tiles but try to get the edges flat so terrain items can be laid over to hide the join lines. Obviously you won't hide every single one but hiding any will help. Rock formations that have a bit of length to them, longish bushes and that sort of thing can be used to sit over the joins and yet they don't have to be perfectly straight. If there's a bit of rocky terrain between tiles making the joints harder to hide then perhaps just a bit of scatter terrain sprinkled over to hide it might suffice.

I would stick with your more recent tiles (first picture) as they are quite possibly the most useful for different theatres. You could also add some 300 x 600 tiles if you want a slightly longer bit of sculpted terrain to help break up the checker-board appearance.

You could also make some specific plain, flat boards that would could have separate terrain items placed on them without too much trouble.

Thinking out of the box but have you though of ceiling storage where there are racks built from the ceiling that lighter terrain boards can be placed (I don't know your particular house construction). You could justify (to yourself at least  ;)) getting 600mm square boards in.

Just some quick thoughts, use them at your peril  :D

cheers

James
cheers

James

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Offline OSHIROmodels

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Re: Terrain conundrum.....
« Reply #2 on: June 29, 2017, 06:07:42 PM »
Just buy three or four and have one for each terrain type  lol

cheers

James

Offline Norm

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Re: Terrain conundrum.....
« Reply #3 on: June 29, 2017, 06:51:29 PM »
Tough call, your modular terrain is so beautiful, would you ever be satisfied with less?

Having made that very obvious statement, I think for a different approach, I would sell the boards, buy good quality game mats in the various styles that your projects demand and then just concentrate on doing high quality plonk down terrain, which is probably the most efficient way to manage terrain storage.

I do wonder though that if you keep all of your big buildings and separately base them as dioramas,  whether the actual saving in'real space' is worth that effort, or whether it would be better to just junk a project and sell of one table of terrain, as it might have roughly the same impact on storage space redeemed.

Offline Captain Blood

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Re: Terrain conundrum.....
« Reply #4 on: June 29, 2017, 08:15:10 PM »
Would seem a shame to get rid of them, because they work so well. Maybe keep just a couple of sets Steve, and decide if there is a roll up, textured mat that you could live with for others of your genres - the snowy landscapes for instance. But I'd hang onto your core grassy boards with river sections etc, because that set is so versatile across multiple genres/ settings.
The trouble with any type of mat, even a nicely made and textured scenic mat with scatter materials glued all over the surface (never mind one of the fucking awful printed neoprene things which suddenly seem to be everywhere) is that you don't get the same relief effect you get with truly 3D terrain - hills, cliffs, rivers, slopes, ditches. All the things we love! You can plonk on standalone hills, woods and buildings, but you can't create rivers, dongas, ditches or depressions.
So it's more versatile, obviously, but a lot less visually appealing and coherent.
But then you know this, so it doesn't help much  ;)

Offline Elk101

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Re: Terrain conundrum.....
« Reply #5 on: June 30, 2017, 07:58:26 AM »
I'm in the process of packing to move house and I have (for now) less storage space, so I know where you're coming from with this. I have already gone the way James suggested with a basis of 300mm x 300mm tiles and some 300x600 and 600x600. Other than the big ones everything fits into two of the big Really Useful Boxes with the rectangular footprint. I have a green and brown grassy board and a reddish brown textured board. It's a compromise but this provides a good degree of flexibility and allows the buildings to be placed on with genre specific scenery to create the period/location sought. It's the buildings that take the space. I've heard the exact same "you've got a lot of boxes"  comment.

Offline matakishi

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Re: Terrain conundrum.....
« Reply #6 on: June 30, 2017, 08:05:18 AM »
I'm thinking you don't really want to get rid of your tiles or you wouldn't be asking advice.
For what it's worth I would go with tiles in the style of your first picture (good modelling, sunken features, big built in hills) but with less scatter so they resemble the layout of your bigger boards in the last picture with plenty of room for drop in scenery and buildings. That way you need less 'feature' tiles and can make a number of plain ones as James suggested.
This presupposes you only want a green battlefield of course. If you want green and snow and desert, well, you're back to square one :)
Ultimately you need to decide your terrain needs priorities. Focus!

Offline jon_1066

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Re: Terrain conundrum.....
« Reply #7 on: June 30, 2017, 01:28:46 PM »
OK here goes.

You have three principal board types - snow, grassy and arid.  Keep all three as they will do you for any of your settings.  Get rid of the bigger boards - they are doubling things up.

You need to minimise height so you can store more boards in the same space.  Take all trees off the boards.  Either base them up to plonk on or have them drop into holes.

Likewise buildings.  Where possible these can be removed to be plonked on into pre-made holes.  This means the buildings will only occupy the storage space that they require rather than having loads of air around them.  You can also put different buildings into/over the holes in order to reflect the different periods and settings.

So you should have a standard board that will occupy a standard storage space (eg 3" high by 12" by 12").  Your hills, cliffs, etc will occupy bigger ones but you should be able to develop some kind of racking system to store the standard ones with minimal airspace between them.  eg if you had storage under your playing surface such that you had 8 tiles width and one deep accessed from both sides you could store 160 tiles under your board (if 3" apart).  Standard boards for 3 different terrain types needs 96 boards leaving room for say 32 double height boards for the hills/cliffs.  If you increase your table height you get more storage.  If you space the racks apart you could have another 20 between them accessed from either end.

If you have thicker boards then you can have spacers to bring the thinner boards up to height.  These would be 3" thick, non scenic and wouldn't need to be full sized. At it's most basic some interlocking battens would do the job.

Offline AKULA

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Re: Terrain conundrum.....
« Reply #8 on: July 01, 2017, 09:31:05 AM »
Why not have a couple of larger one-off boards, (as your tiles are 1' make them 2') that can slotted into the existing terrain, and provide a base for the new building?

I've moved from larger tiles to 450mm squares purely for storage, and transportation, but a couple of one-offs shouldnt take up too much room if they are pretty flat.


 

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